I agree skills can be taught and learned by anyone given enough time but I disagree that the inclination or breeding to this line of work is common it is not common tried and true.

But what we are doing right now as SF teams for the most part can be emulated by big Army especially when we are teaching big Army skills they are masters at....we as an SF unit has to remember that we are doing this so that we can develop a loose potential for guerilla fighters from those we have developed relationships with....at the end of the day our SA in any country is contingent on us being there and knowing what we have to work with.....remember Russell Volkman, Blackburn and Fertig amongst other cadre were doing nation building in the Phillipines prior to WW2 and once they were left behind for 3 years it was some of the same Filipinos that became the resistance force...it should be a template for every FID mission to understand what we are doing

Funny - Just gave essentially the same lecture to a couple of the young guys at the office last week. Not that we've done an indifferent job; quite the opposite, but the last 18 years have obscured the root reasons for our existence. If we're going to differentiate ourselves from the masses and preserve our future, (I think) we need to look back at our founding principles and bring them forward, evolving them and their core TTPs so they're relevant to the world we'll be asked to influence over the next 15-20 years. The other side of that coin is that we build a capability that the US Govt lacks the vision/will to employ and we keep doing "groundhog day" ad infinitum.

__________________
A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and carries his banner openly. But the traitor moves amongst those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself. For the traitor appears not a traitor; he speaks in accents familiar to his victims, and he wears their face and their arguments, he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men. He rots the soul of a nation, he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of the city, he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murderer is less to fear.

Funny - Just gave essentially the same lecture to a couple of the young guys at the office last week. Not that we've done an indifferent job; quite the opposite, but the last 18 years have obscured the root reasons for our existence. If we're going to differentiate ourselves from the masses and preserve our future, (I think) we need to look back at our founding principles and bring them forward, evolving them and their core TTPs so they're relevant to the world we'll be asked to influence over the next 15-20 years. The other side of that coin is that we build a capability that the US Govt lacks the vision/will to employ and we keep doing "groundhog day" ad infinitum.

Funny - Just gave essentially the same lecture to a couple of the young guys at the office last week. Not that we've done an indifferent job; quite the opposite, but the last 18 years have obscured the root reasons for our existence. If we're going to differentiate ourselves from the masses and preserve our future, (I think) we need to look back at our founding principles and bring them forward, evolving them and their core TTPs so they're relevant to the world we'll be asked to influence over the next 15-20 years. The other side of that coin is that we build a capability that the US Govt lacks the vision/will to employ and we keep doing "groundhog day" ad infinitum.

That's the "nut" of the problem IMO. Need to educate the correct audience to the threats and counter strategies first. The current threat is China in SEA and Africa and the methods are economic servitude. I see the role for SF in this environment primarily as one of intelligence gathering. YMMV